Chinese strike shows labor market shift

CHANGING SCENE:Smartphones and social media are helping exploited workers to become aware of their rights and to organize industrial action, analysts said

Reuters, SHANGHAI

IBM workers shout slogans and hold banners as they protest at an IBM factory in Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, China, on Friday.

Photo: Reuters

A wildcat strike at an IBM factory in southern China illustrates how tectonic shifts under way in the country’s labor market are emboldening workers to take matters into their own hands, raising risks for multinationals.

More than 1,000 workers walked off the job last week at the factory in Shenzhen, bordering Hong Kong, after managers on Monday last week announced the terms of their transfer to new ownership under Chinese PC maker Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想).

Lenovo agreed in January to pay US$2.3 billion for IBM’s low-end server business.

The strike, which continued into yesterday, fits a growing pattern of industrial activism that has emerged as China’s economy has slowed. A worsening labor shortage has shifted the balance of power in labor relations, while smartphones and social media have helped workers organize, and made them more aware than ever of the changing environment, experts say.

“Chinese workers, after being exploited for so long, are now more and more aware of their rights, and united. They have more of an idea of collective action,” labor lawyer Duan Yi (段毅) said.

A report by the advocacy group China Labour Bulletin last month said it had tallied 1,171 strikes and protests from the beginning of June 2011 to the end of December last year.

Many worker protests during that time in Guangdong Province, a manufacturing hub where the IBM server factory is situated, were sparked by the closure, merger or relocation of factories.

In November last year, hundreds of employees stopped work at a Nokia factory in Dongguan, near Shenzhen, complaining of changes following Nokia’s sale of its mobile-phone business to US software giant Microsoft Corp.

Duan is seeking arbitration for a group of 70 Nokia workers who were laid off at the time.

In August last year, 5,000 workers in eastern Shandong Province went on strike to protest Apollo Tyres Ltd’s proposed US$2.5 billion acquisition of US-based Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. The deal was eventually scuttled and Cooper reported this month that the work stoppage in China had cut operating profit by US$29 million in the third quarter.

The labor shortage has pushed up wages, impelled employers to cast a wide net to find employees and enhance benefits to retain staff. Workers have gained leverage.

IBM said last week the terms offered to the workers at the International System Technology Co factory in Shenzhen were “comparable in aggregate to what they currently are receiving” and severance packages would be “equitable.”

Lenovo declined to comment.

Technology has helped China’s workers.

When the Nokia factory employees took to the street, they organized through the online chat system QQ and other social media, one worker said by telephone from Dongguan.

In the IBM case, the workers had all read about prior strikes, including Nokia’s, and suspected ahead of time that they might have to make a similar stand, said a 28-year-old worker surnamed Chen, who has worked there for three years.

“We were basically prepared and expected in advance there wouldn’t be a good deal,” he said by telephone from Shenzhen.

He declined to allow his full name to be published out of concern he might face repercussions.

In both cases — and many others, experts say — the impetus for a strike was underpinned by the fact that the factory branch of the state-backed union was seen as a farce.